all legitimate traffic. And it has been the affliction of more than one member of your family to let his ideas run abroad to a length of pernicious extravagance. For instance, my grandfather, a person of capacity and circumspection beyond the average, was factor to your great uncle, Mr. Dudley Rivers, and—"

Laurence kept his eyes fixed on the last blue of the little smoke-cloud curling about the intricate foliations of the upper corner of the picture frame; yet his voice had a certain quickness and vibration in it as he exclaimed—

"Ah! Dudley Rivers—yes. Well, how about him, Armstrong?"

"Not much good, not much good. Like the foolish body recorded by the Psalmist, he had 'said in his heart, There is no God.' And having made that very impious and lying observation, and so disposed of the Deity, he proceeded to supersede the latter in his own person, and attempt the reorganisation of society according to his own hare-brained fancies. Regarding his deliverance from dangerous delusions my grandfather could do but little, being himself a godly man, and holding firmly by the doctrine of Election. If the poor misguided creature would go to the devil, Mr. Rivers, it was—so my grandfather held—because to the devil he was righteously foredoomed and predestined to go. And so my grandfather, relieved of all responsibility in that respect, felt free to apply the whole of his abilities to saving the poor, erring person's treasure on earth, since it was manifestly not the intention of Providence that he should inherit any treasure in heaven. He had long taken entire charge of those estates in the county of Fife, which belonged to Mr. Dudley's young cousin and ward, Miss Agnes Rivers—"

"Ah!" Laurence ejaculated softly.

"And many a time did my grandfather undertake the tedious journey down here, from the north, to lend a seasonable hand in restraining Mr. Dudley from committing some ruinous foolishness in respect of Miss Agnes, or of his own southern property. For Mr. Dudley was just completely saturated with pernicious opinions derived from the writings of Rousseau, and Tom Paine, and other such seditious persons; and Satan entering into him at intervals, and blinding his small surviving modicum of reason, he proposed to reduce them to practice—poor, demented body."

"Yes," Laurence said, "he had graduated in a rather impossible school, no doubt. But—but—Armstrong, what about his private life—his morals?"

"Blameless—blameless—more's the pity, since his virtues could but 

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